Here is my pencil sketch of our model from today’s life drawing group. This is the first time I have felt like I’ve drawn a reasonably good portrait. When I was drawing and I realized my sketch was actually coming out okay, I had a feeling best described as a mixture of profound joy and slight disbelief that I actually was making a good sketch.

In January, I started working my way through Betty Edwards’ book Drawing on the right side of the brain. Aside from helping me pay even closer attention to what I see, it’s turned out to be deeply satisfying to finally be able to draw a reasonable facsimile of a face-such as this attempt to copy a sketch Henri Fuseli (1741-1825) made of himself: